Ben Nicholson
-
London 2014: ‘Dearest’ review
★★★★☆ The taking of a beloved child is the nightmarish scenario at the centre of Thai filmmaker Peter Chan’s effective melodrama, Dearest (2014), competing in the London Film Festival’s Official Competition. China is painfully stricken by people trafficking, a fact that’s at the forefront of Tian Wen-jun (Huang Bo) and Lu Xiao-juan (Hao Lei) minds…
-
DVD Review: ‘Sofia’s Last Ambulance’
★★★☆☆ The state of crisis in an Eastern European healthcare system provides the meat of Ilian Metev’s 2012 documentary Sofia’s Last Ambulance. In some ways comparable to Cristi Puiu’s acclaimed Romanian fictional film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), we follow a trio of ambulance personnel as they navigate the overwhelming task of caring for…
-
DVD Review: ‘Chinese Puzzle’
★★★☆☆ Like a distant Gallic relative to Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy – though worlds apart in terms of style and tone – it’s been over a decade since Cédric Klapisch first introduced a multinational group of friends sharing an Barcelona apartment in Pot Luck (2002). Three years later, they were brought back together for a…
-
London 2014: ’71’ review
★★★☆☆ Setting your debut feature amidst the provocative milieu of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland is a brave gambit, particularly placing it in a period as infamously tumultuous and bloody as Yann Demange’s ’71 (2014). Occurring in the year that the first British soldiers were killed by the IRA, it’s a pulsating chase through the…
-
Film Review: ‘Luna’
★★★☆☆ Familial waters run especially deep in Dave McKean’s haunting new drama Luna (2014), which featured in the experimental Vanguard strand of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. In the director’s striking but uneven 2005 debut feature, Mirrormask, it was style that particularly caught the eye as he crafted an utterly unique blend of reality…
-
DVD Review: ‘In a Bedroom’
★★☆☆☆ “Show, don’t tell” goes the old screenwriting adage. In the case of some avant-garde cinema, however, certain filmmakers don’t even attempt to show, leaving the audience to deduce their own meaning from the images and words on-screen before them. This is certainly the case with Floating Skyscrapers director Tomasz Wasilewski’s brief and esoteric In…
-
Film Review: ‘Ida’
★★★★☆ British-based director Paweł Pawlikowski (My Summer of Love) has spent his entire career thus far outside, geographically at least, his native Poland. Now, with his fifth feature film, he journeys back to rediscover his homeland along with his two lead characters in the stunningly beautiful Ida (2013). It’s a trip back in time to…
-
Film Review: ‘The Riot Club’
★★★☆☆ The last few years of Conservative government have provided ample opportunity for the left-leaning to condemn the Oxbridge elite prevalent in the higher echelons of British politics. Taking up that cause is An Education (2009) director Lone Scherfig’s bright young toffs drama The Riot Club (2014), based on Laura Wade’s West End play Posh.…
-
Interview: Kelly Reichardt on her radical ‘Night Moves’
Kelly Reichardt’s career has thus far seen a string of characters interacting – for better or worse – with the natural landscapes of the Pacific northwest. Whether they be settlers in the mid-19th century or two guys on a weekend road trip, Oregon in particular has proved both a comfort and an obstacle for her…
-
Interview: Amat Escalante and the brutality of ‘Heli’
Director Amat Escalante’s third feature, Heli (2013), has been the subject of much discussion since it received its world premiere at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Featuring more than one scene of brutal violence, it’s been described variously as a portrait of modern Mexico, a tender love story and a blatant attempt to shock squeamish…
